BOEING FINALLY UNVEILS AUSTRALIAN-MADE LOYAL WINGMAN PROTOTYPE

[red750]

Story and image here.

 

[Flightrite]

I thought I was watching a high end European car add?

Love the last comment..." We innovate" obvioisly for "MAX" effect!??

[Old Koreelah]

Its lines reminded me of the English Electric Canberra bomber- one of the most successful designs of all time.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Electric_Canberra

[Flightrite]

Y

Its lines reminded me of the English Electric Canberra bomber- one of the most successful designs of all time.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Electric_Canberra

You mean these old things? Doesn't look anything like them but hey we each see things differently?

[Student Pilot]

Just what Australia needs, another billion dollar defence project. Just imagine if half of the joint strike fighter and the sub contracts was spent on public health and education, what it would do for Australia as a nation.

[Flightrite]

Just what Australia needs, another billion dollar defence project. Just imagine if half of the joint strike fighter and the sub contracts was spent on public health and education, what it would do for Australia as a nation.

 

Don't be silly doing such is not in the best interests of this nation, besides as a species we are destined to waste money on new ways to kill off ourselves!

[Yenn]

No 14 in the world on defence spending. I don't know who spends more, other than obviously USA, Britain, France and maybe Russia.

[red750]

[Mike Gearon]

Xi 2, Modi 3, Vladimir 4, MBS 5, somebody in France 6, Angela 7, Boris 8, somebody in Japan 9.

 

Japanese ones I removed without wiki were Takeshita and Fukuda.

[Downunder]

Watched the video......100% catch phrases, power words, marketing.

0%.......substance.....

[spenaroo]

Iraq, I question how much of that is grants from the USA.

But Israel is a surprise, expected them to be higher. Almost constant threats and the constant need to upgrade/innovate and to deal with their neighbors effectively.

[Marty_d]

Story and image here.

 

Did anyone else get a shiver down the spine when they said "Trusted autonomy"??

As I recall that didn't go so well in Terminator...

[Downunder]

Saudi arabia number 3? Rag tag Houthi's seem to kick their arse constantly...lol.

[turboplanner]

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That pretty much matches our 13th GDP ranking; we punch well above our population base.

[Flightrite]

The words 'trust & Boeing' are an oxymoron!?

[Old Koreelah]

That pretty much matches our 13th GDP ranking; we punch well above our population base.

This graph may be a little dated, but it shows that Australia can't pretend to be a minor economy:

[Bruce Tuncks]

I read, to my amazement, that Australia and Russia have similar military budgets.. I would have said that Russia's was huge in comparison. Like comparing their Antonov planes to Jabirus. But that graph indicates what I read.

Maybe those russians pay less and get more stuff?

[hihosland]

They don't buy American

[Marty_d]

The Russians are amazing in many ways. Their economy is much the same as ours but when it comes to military, aviation and aerospace they pretty much do it all themselves.

Since the collapse of the US Space Shuttle program the Russians have been doing all the astronaut transfers to & from the ISS, to my knowledge. Perhaps that'll change when private companies like Spacex become competitive.

[Litespeed]

Simple really......

 

Just look at the old space programs .....

 

The Yanks develop a special pen to write in space......cost millions

 

 

The Russians just use a 10 cent lead pencil.

 

Says it all really

[Old Koreelah]

Simple really......

 

Just look at the old space programs .....

 

The Yanks develop a special pen to write in space......cost millions...

...which would develop technology that can be transferred to solving other problems here on earth.

[Litespeed]

I agree but that is more a case of the government spending billions on a millions problem. Yes spin offs, are great, but the philosophy of big bloated budgets leads to expensive for the public advances and profits for overcharging contractors.

 

In modern times, India has shown they can do a great job on a shoestring in the space game.

 

And today's corporate contracts mean Boeing will get the wins more than us.

[Flightrite]

There would be plenty of corruption in these high stakes Govt contracts!

Bottomless pits tend to attract the opportunists!

The world's powerful nations spends huge bucks to find ways to blow each other up!

[willedoo]

I read, to my amazement, that Australia and Russia have similar military budgets.. I would have said that Russia's was huge in comparison. Like comparing their Antonov planes to Jabirus. But that graph indicates what I read.

Maybe those russians pay less and get more stuff?

Bruce, you are correct there; the Russians do get more bang for their Ruble. There's a few reasons for that. Firstly, the Russian Federation, when it comes to military manufacturing, has retained a lot of the centralism of Soviet manufacturing. The design bureaus and plants that survived the breakup of the USSR are now corporations and companies but the military and government still has a lot of control over them. The military and the scientists identify a need, run it by the government, then the company gets the order to design and produce. It all gets done in a typically no-fuss Russian fashion with everyone singing from the same page, from the government right down to the sub-contractors. They have a holistic approach to design and manufacturing which minimises the American style of corporate snouts in the public trough and sloppy, costly, piecemeal development.

 

Their budget is usually about one tenth that of the U.S. in post Soviet times. Even in Soviet days it was a lot less. The Soviets knew they could never defeat the U.S. one on one in a full frontal conventional conflict because of the sheer amount of gear and money the Americans had. So they developed a system to do the most damage with minimal funds. Their concept was to develop highly mobile, hard hitting forces - eg. to strike at the American belly, retreat quickly and hit them hard somewhere else. In modern times, it's still the way it's done, enabling a smaller more affordable force. Also, the Russian forces are mostly defence orientated as opposed to the U.S. requiring large offensive forces deployed all over the world to ensure world domination (or world peace according to them). The U.S. has eleven carriers to project power outside their own country which is a huge drain on their budget. That compares to one old ex Soviet rust bucket on the Russian side that spends most of it's life in dock for repairs.

 

The other factor is that the Russian defence budget has fluctuated quite a bit over the years. After the fallout of the Soviet Union collapse, the military fell behind badly. Their defence force was run down, outdated and diminished to the point of inadequacy. In recent years they have embarked on a rebuilding and modernization programme aided by revenue from high oil prices and political will. They were lucky enough to have been able to outlay the biggest expenditure before the oil price drop. In recent years, their budget has been around the 60-70 billion, but they've now reached the point where the military is up to scratch and they can ease off on spending. Next years budget will possibly be no more than Australia's or even less. They've done all the hard yards in spending.

 

The timing has worked out as well. They were smart enough to spend up when oil was high. This came at a cost of reduced spending on the public and social programmes. Now that economic tough times are here, they plan to divert more funds to the citizenry and services. This will help government re-election and because of previous spending, shouldn't impact their defence capabilities. Prioritizing military development over social spending was a gamble to ensure they had the capability to defend the nation, but now it's time to turn it around. The government is very aware that social issues could be their downfall, and the fact that the Communist Party is no.2 in votes, is a constant reminder. The U.S. on the other hand, has a more even amount of spending from year to year as they are not subject to as many variables as the Russians.